The Flea

In “The Flea,” John Donne uses a metaphysical conceit through the imagery of a flea to portray sexual desires and romance. In the very first line of the poem, the speaker brings up the flea by telling the woman to “Mark but this flea,” which makes it sound like he wants the woman to only pay attention to the flea and nothing else (line 1). In the third line, the imagery the flea is further expanded upon when the speaker begins making the flea sound like a sexual object, such as when he says, “It sucked me first, and now sucks thee / And in this flea our two bloods mingled be” (lines 3-4). In these lines, the speaker is inciting that the woman and him are becoming one with each other because the flea went from biting him to now biting her, and …show more content…
When the speaker says, “Thou know’st that this cannot be said / A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead” he is trying to seduce the woman by telling her that having sex with him is no wrongdoing (lines 5-6). Interestingly, the word “maidenhead” (virginity) stood out to me because back in these times virginity was very important since a woman that had sex outside of marriage would usually lose her reputation and essentially become an outcast. In the following lines, the speaker uses more rhetoric to persuade the woman to have sex with him when he says, “And pampered swells with one blood made of two, / and this, alas, is more than we would do” (lines 8-9). In these lines, the speaker is using the imagery of the flea again as a way to make the woman think that the speaker has no intentions of having sex because he says they will do no more than what the flea is already doing to …show more content…
Interestingly, the speaker says this because the woman is about to squash the flea but doing so would destroy their love, at least, that is according to the speaker. Therefore, the speaker takes a big chance and says, “Oh stay, three lives in one fleas spare, - Three lives better than two / Where we almost, nay more than married are,” which essentially means that the flea, the woman, and the speaker have more love together than a married couple does, so she should not destroy the flea or risk destroying their love (lines 10-11). Likewise, in the next two lines the speaker blends sacred and sexual imagery together when he says, “The flea is you and I, and this / Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is” (lines 12-13). These lines are very important to the poem because they are fundamentally the speakers biggest shot at gaining the love of the woman. He is saying that the flea already has both of their bloods mixed together inside of it, which is a symbol of their love being consummated, and then the flea also takes on the symbol of a church or a temple as a way to assert that they are basically married so they might as well physically consummate the marriage to make it